I Frankenstein – Nerdisthttp://nerdist.com
Sat, 10 Dec 2016 02:30:53 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1The Shelf: HER, I FRANKENSTEIN, ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACKhttp://nerdist.com/the-shelf-her-i-frankenstein-orange-is-the-new-black/
Tue, 13 May 2014 19:00:41 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=146736This week, we’ve got romance between man and machine, the very weird after effects of man attempting to create life out of dead things, and the awkward story of several dozen women all wearing the same outfit.

We’re getting closer and closer to the idea of “the singularity,” that moment when technology will catch up to the power of the human brain, able to think freely and on its own, and then eventually surpass us to the point where we either need to become one with that technology or fade away. While most movies that deal with this idea go about it from a very negative global perspective (“The machines are taking over!” Terminator, The Matrix, etc.), Spike Jonze’s Her looks at it from a very personal point of view, and discusses the way tech has at once brought all of us together and left us completely lonely in the process. It’s definitely a movie for the internet generation, and a surprisingly touching and realistic account of complicated relationships.

The film is set in the near future and centers on Theo (Joaquin Phoenix), a lonely man whose marriage fell apart but he can’t seem to let it go. He spends his days working for Elegant Hand Written Letters dot com, for which he has to dictate the feelings of a client to their loved ones while the computer etches these words in the client’s handwriting. It’s an immediate way to learn about Theo’s state of mind and his soulful nature, but also society’s inability to express real emotion to each other in person. It’s at least three steps removed. All of Theo’s correspondence of his own comes in the form of talking to his personal computer, which is, needless to say, very cold. Theo then purchases a brand new OS, which is designed to learn and have personality. He wants it to be a female voice and she becomes Samantha and sounds like Scarlett Johansson.

What starts as a working relationship quickly becomes a friendship and then more than a friendship, as Samantha wants to learn about the world through Theo’s eyes. She is becoming truly alive, even though neither of them are quite sure what that means. While some of Theo’s friends, namely his upstairs neighbor and friend (Amy Adams) and his co-worker (Chris Pratt), think what Theo and Samantha have is great, his soon-to-be-ex-wife (Rooney Mara) certainly does not. Theo has a crisis and has to decide whether he’s okay with having the person in his life be a voice and thoughts and nothing more.

This is easily one of the best movies of 2013, and was very high on my personal Top 10 list. It’s a really touching and, I stress again, realistic depiction of what a non-traditional relationship is like. If you’ve ever had a long-distance significant other, you’ll be able to relate. Jonze never has the film go where you think it will, but it always feels true to both the nature of the story and the characters. On top of that, Jonze mixes parts of Downtown Los Angeles and Shanghai, China to create a kind of familiar but still futuristic city. It’s one of the most believable representations of “the near future” in any movie. It’s funny, it’s uncomfortable, it’s warm, and it’s heartbreaking. Her is a definite must-see.

Boy, that Dr. Frankenstein was way more brilliant than we originally thought. Not only did he create life out of dead tissue sewn together and electricity surging through said flesh, but the subsequent creature is now practically immortal. Also, even though the creature is not named Frankenstein, for the purposes of being alive 200 years later, he’s taken up that mantle. So, his name is Adam Frankenstein. This is the basic, already-hard-to-buy setup for I, Frankenstein, a late January release which is already coming out on Blu-ray.

Aaron Eckhart plays Adam Frankenstein, the very old but still spry and handsome creation of his namesake, who, as he buried his creator up in the Arctic, is attacked by demons but then saved by gargoyles who want the creature to help them in their quest to destroy demons on Earth. Oh, the gargoyles were created by the Archangel Michael, did I not mention that? Adam wants nothing to do with them, but they give him a gargoyle weapon anyway so he can dispatch any demons he comes across. Hundreds of years later, he’s in modern dress and is once again called upon to help the gargoyles, this time in an all-out war between the two ancient clans of monsters.

There’s no two ways about it, this movie is dumb. Only the second feature to be directed by longtime screenwriter Stuart Beattie, I, Frankenstein was co-written by one of the writers of Underworld, and it bears so many similarities it’d almost be cause for litigation if someone else did it. You’ve got your evil race of monsters, you’ve got your “good” race of monsters, you’ve got an outsider who can’t get involved but inevitably does, and you’ve got a human/love interest there for reasons. It’s a bit Van Helsing and a bit Blade and a bit CGI-overload. Bad dialogue, incomprehensible plot, and way hokey performances. Skip it.

Netflix’s much lauded dramedy comes to Blu-ray this week as well. Following the based-on-a-true-story of a preppy and pampered New Yorker who gets sent to prison for a year because of a drugs trafficking charge from years before when she was in a relationship with a woman who did that thing. It begins as kind of a kitschy premise but it becomes something much deeper and intriguing, as we see the backstories and plights of many of the other women in the prison as the season goes on. It seems being in prison is not fun.

The cast for this show is really fantastic, with special commendation paid to Taylor Schilling as Piper, our lead character, who has to quickly learn to adapt to her new surroundings. Her arc over the episodes is really drastic, and we’re not even through her whole sentence (there is a season two, you know). Jason Biggs plays Piper’s fiance, who is finding it pretty difficult on the outside as well. He has a somewhat thankless role of “the boyfriend,” but he’s really quite good as well. The side characters become some of the most compelling, with a forbidden relationship between an inmate and a guard, another guard dealing drugs in the prison under the nose of the Russian gangster mother, and a religious zealot psychopath who hates Piper’s very being.

Now, you’re asking, if it’s on Netflix, why get it on Blu-ray? Well, there are commentaries on the episodes by cast and crew, which are pretty enlightening, as well as a few behind-the-scenes features. Not much, really, but if you’re a fan of the show, you’ll probably find something here to enjoy.

Surely you remember any number of those cheeky revisionist monster fight flicks from the last few years: The self-aware, vaguely spoofy, all-too-cutesy and well-remembered entertainments like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, or Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters. Sure there was also the truly lugubrious Jack The Giant Slayer in that mix, and I would count the bafflingly popular and utterly ghastly 300 in that lot, but for the most part, these openly deliberate mutations of famous stories or myths are harmless fun. Most of them are possessed of a slight, jokey, tongue-in-cheek tone, allowing the films to play less as serious reconsiderations of time-old material and more like the Mad Magazine versions of themselves.

Stuart Beattie’s bugnuts-crazy monster mash I, Frankenstein (based on a comic book) has no such levity, despite how off-the-wall it is. This is a steel-colored, stony-serious war picture that just happens to be about the eternal battle between demons and gargoyles, and the innocent warrior Frankenstein who gets caught in the middle. The premise is the stuff of 10-year-old boy fantasies, or perhaps an ambitious luchador film from the 1960s. This is the kind of film where actors scream lines like “Return to the Gargoyle Queen! Tell her I have Frankenstein’s journal!” and never once crack a smile, wink to the audience, or give the audience the slightest hint that this is perhaps the single stupidest monster film of the last decade.

The story of I, Frankenstein picks up where Mary Shelley’s novel left off, leaving the tragic monster (Aaron Eckhart) to murder his creator. As the embittered monster is burying Dr. Frankenstein, he is suddenly besieged by a pack of roving demons who “must return him to Prince Naberius!” The monster is luckily protected by a passing gang of holy gargoyles who, as we soon learn (from gargoyle queen Miranda Otto), are God’s army on Earth sent to fight encroaching demon threats. The gargoyles try to enlist the Frankenstein into their army, but he refuses, looking out for #1. Fast-forward 200 years, and good ol’ Frankie is still alive, and still fighting off the occasional demon.

Additionally: a comely medical doctor named Terra (Yvonne Strahovski) has just now found a way to resurrect dead rats with a laser chamber (you read that correctly), and the head of the modern-day demons (Bill Nighy) wants to use the machine to… Look, does the story really matter? Let’s just wrack up a goofiness tally instead: Medical doctors refer to the Frankenstein story as “just a myth.” Frankenstein leaps off the roof of a car and punches a gargoyle in the face. There are gargoyles in the film. A gargoyle warrior keeps his axe in three parts just so he can assemble it on the battlefield. An evil demon lord – even though he doesn’t know if he’ll ever actually discover the right technology – has been amassing bodies for years in the hopes that maybe he’ll be able to resurrect them someday, maybe. And at one point, there is a glowing computer readout on a screen indicating just how alive a creature is by percentage. I guess something can be only 17.2% alive.

Oh, yes, and let us not forget the bizarre detail that there seem to be no people in this universe. Aside from our lead human character, and a few fleeting scenes in a club and on a subway train, the city where this film is set (Budapest? Bucharest? Detroit?) seems to be absent of human beings. Demons and gargoyles fight across the rooftops, turning one another into smoking fireballs of death, smashing walls, breaking cars, and generally causing huge amounts of general mayhem, and not one person seems to be present to witness any of this.

The aesthetic of I, Frankenstein is colorless and drab, having taken its visual cues from the disposable Underworld films. The gargoyles are sloppy CGI concoctions with gray skin and no distinguishing characteristics. In close-ups, the demons at least seem to be actors in makeup, but in battle scenes, they are a mob of flashing video game avatars. Thank goodness we have someone like Bill Nighy to deliver his monster dialogue with the appropriate Hammer Film panache and no small amount of glee. And I do have to give credit to Eckhart, whose performance as Frankenstein is miles afield from Boris Karloff, and buddying uncomfortably close to a typically tough, ripped movie badass.

Wow. Aaron Eckhart’s career has taken a few weird turns, hasn’t it? You have to admire a man who can work with Neil LaBute on multiple occasions, and then turns around to star in a charming indie comedy, a Batman film, and some truly awful Hollywood garbage (he was in Battle Los Angeles). I, Frankenstein is certainly of the latter vintage.

And while I can openly acknowledge I, Frankenstein as the open can of stupidity that it is, I am tempted to recommend it nonetheless for its plucky insanity. The film may not be having too much fun with its monster-on-monster action, but many people at my midnight screening were certainly having a ball with it, giggling in constant incredulity. I, Frankenstein may be destined to become a late-night camp-fest in dorm rooms across the country. It will not, however, be defended as good.

What a strange sequel to I, Robot. (I’m joking of course; it’s the sequel to I, Claudius.) Here we have the first trailer for screenwriter-turned-director Stuart Beattie’s I, Frankenstein, starring Aaron Eckhart, Yvonne Strahovski, and Bill Nighy the Science Gighy. Based on a graphic novel and original screenplay by Underworld‘s Kevin Greivoux, the movie sees Eckhart’s centuries-old man-made monster (who, unlike his literary counterpart, seems to be impervious to fire) getting swept up in the ancient battle between gargoyles and…something else.

The movie’s due out in January, which doesn’t usually bode well for a studio’s faith in it, but it looks like it could be cool. What do you think? Will this be another Van Helsing or will it be good? Discuss in the comments below, and let us know what your favorite horror movie based on a piece of literature is.